Externalities can have a powerful effect on financial stability. This column studies the amplification effect that can operate despite value at risk regulation, which suffers from the ‘fallacy of composition’. It shows that the magnitudes of booms and busts are amplified by two significant externalities triggered by aggregate shocks: the endogeneity of bank equity due to mark-to-market accounting and of bank liquidity due to 'fire-sales' of securitised assets. In addition to economic models, legal and political factors should also be considered.

Leveraged finance is booming, just as it was in the run-up to the Global Crisis. As before, central banks are bystanders, with only banking instruments for macroprudential policy. this column argues there are unused regulatory powers that can rein in investment funds. A cross-sectoral approach would help to rein in the current unsustainable levels of leveraged finance.

The current financial system is characterised by the coexistence of direct market finance, regulated banks, and shadow banks. This column looks at what gives rise to each of these sources of finance as well as the effect of bank capital regulation on the financing that flows through them. High 'flat' (or risk-insensitive) capital requirements shift intermediate-risk entrepreneurs from regulated banks to shadow banks, while high risk-based requirements do the same for high-risk entrepreneurs, increasing the risk of the corresponding loans. This result highlights the need to take into account the existence of shadow banks when designing bank capital regulation.

As life expectancy has increased, so has the need for retirement savings. New financial instruments have been important in meeting the increasing demand for safe assets. This column shows that shadow banking has played a crucial role in meeting the higher demand for insurance by lowering the financial sector’s liquidity costs. Despite its role in the Great Recession, shadow banking has done more good than harm.

When and how did shadow banking started? In this video, Tamim Bayoumi argues it can be traced back to EU and US regulations, and also to increases in inflation. This video was recorded at the "10 years after the crisis" conference held in London, on 22 September 2017.

The Global Crisis started ten years ago and proved a turning point in global economic policy. CEPR organised a high-level conference to discuss whether the regulatory reaction has been sufficient and where the next crisis might come from. This column summarises the conference discussions and introduces a set of video interviews with leading economists at the conference, including Paul Krugman, Anat Admati, John Vickers, Paul Tucker, among others.

The Global Crisis highlighted how linkages between banks and shadow banking entities can lead to the amplification of shocks across borders and sectors, prompting policymakers to seek to improve the monitoring framework for assessing the interconnectedness of the shadow banking system. This column documents the cross-sector and cross-border exposures of EU banks to globally domiciled shadow banking entities. Among the findings are that 60% of these exposures are to shadow banking entities domiciled outside the EU and hence outside its supervisory powers, and that approximately 65% of the exposures are to non-money market fund investment funds, finance companies, and securitisation entities.

Macroprudential policies increasingly lie at the heart of how central banks jointly manage of price and financial stability. However, consensus over best practice has yet to emerge. This column presents an improved indicator to measure individual economies’ macroprudential policy capacity. Improvements include incorporating the shadow banking sector, and distinguishing the types of institutions that wield authority. Results suggest that improvements continue to be made with respect to the development of an international financial system with improved resilience to shocks.

Banking is one of the most complex areas of modern economies. Flawed understanding, mismanagement, and bad regulation of banks have caused the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2010 and the worst economic crisis in Europe in decades. This course will shed some light on the theory of banking and recent empirical insights into the functioning of banks. Starting from a thorough discussion of basic conceptual frameworks it will discuss elements of shadow banking, financial stability, and bank regulation.

The course provides an introduction to the conceptual foundations of banking and explores the workings of banks in modern economies, by looking at problems of credit intermediation, liquidity provision, maturity transformation, relationship lending, and bank competition.

The rise of shadow banking in China after the Global Crisis helped stabilise output growth. This column looks at entrusted lending, a unique feature of Chinese shadow banking. Banks played a prominent role in the rapid rise of entrusted lending during the period of monetary tightening following the Crisis; the bulk of shadow lending was channelled by non-state banks into risky industries. Such financial distortions will eventually hamper the progress of transforming from investment-led growth to balanced growth, unless proper regulations are put in place.

The 2007–08 crisis revealed regulatory failures that had allowed the shadow banking system and systemic risk to grow unchecked. This column evaluates recent proposals to reform the banking industry. Although appropriate pricing of risk should make activity restrictions redundant, there may nevertheless be complementarities between these two approaches. Ring-fencing may make banking groups more easily resolvable and therefore lower the cost of imposing market discipline.

There has been an extensive debate over whether central banks should raise interest rates to ‘lean against’ the build-up of leverage in the financial system. This column reports on empirical evidence showing that, in contrast to the conventional view, surprise monetary contractions have tended to increase shadow bank asset growth, rather than reduce it in the US. Monetary policy had the opposite effect on commercial bank asset growth. These findings cast some doubt on the idea that monetary policy could be used to “get in all the cracks” of the financial system in a uniform way.

The prevailing view of shadow banking is that it is all about regulatory arbitrage – evading capital requirements and exploiting ‘too big to fail’. This column focuses instead on the tradeoff between economic growth and financial stability. Shadow banking transforms risky, illiquid assets into securities that are – in good times, at least – treated like money. This alleviates the shortage of safe assets, thereby stimulating growth. However, this process builds up fragility, and can exacerbate the depth of the bust when the liquidity of shadow banking securities evaporates.

The ‘shadow banking’ sector is a loose title given to the financial sector that exists outside the regulatory perimeter but mimics some structures and functions of banks. CEPR Policy Insight 69 looks into what we have learned about shadow banking since the Global Crisis.

Modern banks operate in a complex global financial ecosystem. This column argues that proper regulation requires an updating of our ideas about how they operate. Modern banks finance bond portfolios with uninsured money market instruments, and thus link cash portfolio managers and risk portfolio managers. Gone are the days when banks linked ultimate borrowers with ultimate savers via loans and deposits. The Flow of Funds should be updated to reflect the new realities.

QE is still on, but central banks are pondering exit pathways. Exit requires vacuuming up excess reserves, winding down massive securities holdings, and restoring normal interest rates – all without killing the recovery. This column points to the importance of a seemingly technical issue – the impact of the exit on the supply of high-quality collateral. This matters since collateral plays a critical role in today’s credit and money creation processes. When reducing excess reserves, the ‘how’ matters as much as the ‘when’ and ‘how much’.

There is much confusion about what shadow banking is and why it might create systemic risks. This column presents shadow banking as ‘all financial activities, except traditional banking, which rely on a private or public backstop to operate’. The idea that shadow banking is something that needs a backstop changes how we think about regulation. Although it won’t be easy, regulation is possible.

The risks associated with shadow banking are at the forefront of the regulatory debate. Yet, this column argues that there is as yet no established analytical approach to shadow banking. This means that policy priorities are not clearly motivated. But if we analyse securitisation and collateral intermediation – the two shadow banking functions most important for financial stability – a solid framework that includes existing policy recommendations, as well as some alternative ones, begins to emerge.